PLEASE NOTE: Our seminar room has a limited capacity. Please arrive early to ensure you get a seat. The talk will begin promptly at 5.
The next talk in the CDC Seminar series will be given by:
Liz Robinson, The University of Warwick
Date: Wednesday, October 17, 2012, 5 PM
Location: Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor
To Believe or Disbelieve what we’re Told? Understanding about Transfer of Knowledge
Abstract: I shall contrast two different bases for judging whether or not an apparently well-intentioned informant’s testimony is likely to be reliable. In the first, the informant serves as a proxy for the self, gaining the knowledge that we would gain if we had that same experience. For example, our informant looks out the window and tells us that the taxi has arrived. Assuming the informant is well-intentioned, it is reasonable to believe that the taxi has indeed arrived. Under circumstances such as these we can make an accurate evaluation of the truth of what we are told, but we gain only specific knowledge. For gaining generalizable and culture-specific knowledge such as names or function of objects, we need to determine whether our informant has characteristics indicative of being generally knowledgeable, such as having a history of accuracy. Our prediction of trustworthiness will be rough and ready, and could just be based on rules of thumb rather than understanding of knowledge transfer. I shall summarize experiments examining children’s understanding that a person with a history of inaccuracy will not necessarily be unreliable in the future (their errors might be due to circumstances that no longer hold), while a person with a history of accuracy will not necessarily be reliable (they might have had external help that is no longer available). Taking such circumstances into account demands understanding of knowledge transfer.